Linbeck Group Announces Completion of Mays Family Center at Witte Museum

“All of us at Linbeck are passionate about heritage and cultural buildings and are thrilled to have the opportunity to support this renowned cultural asset. – Mark Gore, VP of Operations”

Linbeck Group, a Texas-based, technology-driven building construction firm, announces the completion of the Mays Family Center at the Witte Museum located at 3801 Broadway Street in San Antonio.

Part of a three-phase, $100 million improvement project, the Witte Museum is undergoing a major expansion and renovation adding more than 100,000 square feet of space with the addition of the Mays Family Center and improvements to the Main Building, which Linbeck will turn over to the exhibit contractor late this summer.

The Mays Family Center, San Antonio’s newest marquee event venue, is a 17,000-square-foot, stand-alone facility for traveling exhibits and special events. Linbeck began construction of the Mays Family Center in December 2014 after it entered into a partnership with the museum to produce a state-of-the-art facility while allowing the Witte Museum to maintain its operations during construction.

The first floor of this building is cast-in-place concrete, and the superstructure is exposed steel with combination wood and structural roof trusses. The exterior, which is designed to match the Main Building, features German smear limestone, cast stone dinosaur footprint accents and a window wall. The building is surrounded on two sides by an expansive Massaranduba-wood deck that overlooks the San Antonio River. Because the building is in a flood zone, Linbeck elevated the foundation four to six feet with drilled piers.

The Linbeck team also installed a 30-foot wide Porfirio Salina mural at the Mays Family Center. Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) is one of the first Mexican-American painters to become widely recognized for his art and remains one of the Lone Star State’s most popular artists.

“We are extremely grateful for the powerful partnership with the Linbeck Group, which embraced the vision of the Mays Family Center to underscore the dedication of the Museum to the air, land, and water of Texas, and to build an unprecedented multi-use museum facility for both exhibitions and events,” said Marise McDermott, President and CEO of the Witte Museum.

The Mays Family Center was constructed atop the Acequia Madre de Valero, an 18th-century agricultural rock and clay-lined irrigation canal built by Texas Indians and Spanish settlers. The rock and clay canal, buried under six feet of fill, was exposed in several places during construction to document its location by The City of San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation. A re-creation of the historic diversion dam will be built in the new Acequia Garden as part of the Witte’s mission to provide a link of the history of the site to the visitor.

“All of us at Linbeck are passionate about heritage and cultural buildings and are thrilled to have the opportunity to support this renowned cultural asset,” said Mark Gore, VP of Operations, Linbeck Group. “The significance and complexities of the Mays Family Center project allowed us the opportunity to highlight our skillset in developing iconic cultural buildings.”

In supporting Witte’s mission, Linbeck assisted in various fundraising activities during construction of Witte Museum’s Mays Family Center and the Main Building.

Technologies used on the Witte Museum project included BIM coordination and modeling for the Mays Family Center project, and structural steel and MEPF systems modeling for both the Mays Family Center and the Witte Main Building.

About Witte Museum

The Witte Museum, established in 1926 under the charter of the San Antonio Museum Association, is located adjacent to Brackenridge Park in Midtown Brackenridge on the banks of the San Antonio River. It is dedicated to natural history, science and South Texas heritage. The permanent collection features historic artifacts and photographs, Texas art, textiles, the world-renowned Hertzberg Circus Collection, dinosaur bones, cave drawings, Texas wildlife dioramas and the four-story H-E-B Science Treehouse; in addition to nationally acclaimed traveling exhibits.

About Linbeck Group

Founded in 1938, Linbeck is an award-winning, Texas-based, technology-driven building construction firm offering construction management at-risk, design/build, and integrated project delivery services. Using a suite of commercial and proprietary digital technologies and its unique Lean Operating System, Linbeck helps institutional and select private clients mitigate risk and minimize waste to achieve optimal outcomes for their organizations. With offices in Houston, Fort Worth, and San Antonio and projects throughout the United States, Linbeck’s portfolio primarily consists of healthcare, higher education, hospitality, cultural, private primary and secondary education, and large mixed-use and high-density residential real estate markets.